Trier Spotlight – Polar Panorama

Trier Spotlight – Polar Panorama

July 24th, 2011
Trier Polar Panorama

Trier Polar Panorama

During my time in Trier, Germany, I wanted to do a polar panorama, but I was missing a pretty important piece of equipment that I use to make them, which would happen to be a tripod. I felt like the best (and most tricky) place to do it  would be the shopping district, where all of the classic architecture was met with modern businesses.

One problem was that there were always lots of people walking through the area, which can be pretty disastrous for someone doing a panoramic image. However, the bigger problem was that I needed precise incremental photos to get a good polar panorama, and since I didn’t have a tripod, that was almost impossible. I ended up not having enough good shots for the ground leaving me with a pretty big hole in the middle. To make it worse, the ground surface was a very complex brick pattern, so to do it manually was a daunting task and I didn’t feel up to it.

So as you can see, I gave the image a kind of advertisement feel with the city’s logo in the middle; Maybe it could be something you would see as a cover to a tour guide or something.

Trier Spotlight – St. Peter’s Cathedral

Trier Spotlight – St. Peter’s Cathedral

July 24th, 2011
Inside St. Peter's Cathedral

Inside St. Peter's Cathedral

After my trip to Germany, I experienced some terrible jet lag. I had a bit of a cold, so all the symptoms were amplified quite a bit. So all that in addition to it being my first long distance trip, I lost around two weeks of coherency and efficiency. As a result, I kind of forgot to post some of the images I made during my time there. So I decided to post some stuff now!

This first submission covers my experience in St. Peter’s Cathedral, which is an extremely big place. I felt like panoramic images would be the best way to show how big the places I went to seemed, and I really like the way they came out. Having so many images stitched together gave the images I made the proper scale that they deserved.

Cathedral Exterior

Cathedral Exterior

Custom Penholder

Custom Penholder

July 17th, 2011

I was able to re-purpose an old and no longer operating Minolta 28-70mm lens by taking out most of the interior elements and replacing them with pens and other writing tools! I did the same with a broken Sigma 70-300 lens that you can kind of see in the background.

Summer Self Portrait

Summer Self Portrait

July 13th, 2011
Summer Self Portrait

Summer Self Portrait

 

I recently created a google+ account (cough cough), and when I went to set my default picture, I realized that nothing I had was up to date, as my usual medium to long-ish hair was replaced by what I like to call my “Peter Parker” haircut.

For some reason I decided to get fancy and went out back to the “studio” where I had my three lights that were used in the cubelite setup, and lit a scene in the very hot room and took some pictures of myself. This was one I ended up with, and I was happy with the lighting creating some depth in the picture. I originally took bracketed photos to do some HDR stuff, but once again I was happy with the proper exposure and ignored the other ones.

Cubelite Test – Goalie Mask

Cubelite Test – Goalie Mask

June 15th, 2011
First Cubelite Test

First Cubelite Test

I had some experience a few years ago with a Lastolite Cubelite, which is a light tent for shooting products/people/animals/anything that will fit depending on what size you get. They did a good job at allowing you to get nice even light and soft shadows, so when I was given the task to shoot products and was asked if I needed any equipment, the Cubelite was at the top of the list.

To allow flexibility in what and how I would be shooting, I elected to go for the 4 Foot version, with a three-light setup and a white vinyl backdrop. I may change the backdrop from time to time as far as colors and textures go, but that remains to be seen.

Set up was simple; It’s pretty hard to go wrong when bringing it out of the carrying bag and even more difficult to get poor lighting once you have everything in the right position. Breaking down can be a bit more challenging, as the frame of the Cubelite can be a bit quirky to get back to the shape required to fit in the bag. However, once you get it down, it is a simple routine.

Once you have a shooting setup like this, it’s pretty easy to want to pull everything you have out and take nice evenly-lit photos of everything. I elected to use my brother’s goalie mask, which features a paint job that was conceptually developed by me. Right out of the camera, the photos required extremely little editing; All I did was some slight selective color tweaks for color fidelity.